Imagine attracting a long queue that includes boxing legend Mike Tyson!
By now, it isn’t surprising when Filipino cuisines make waves abroad, as there’s no doubt foreigners love our food. But what’s always noteworthy is when it stands out so much that it’s specially selected to represent our country.
Such is the case for Manila-based food enterprise Pepita’s Kitchen, which has turned heads ever since setting up a stall inside the ritzy Resorts World Las Vegas, a newly-opened luxury resort located at the North end of the Las Vegas Strip.
Dedet de la Fuente, more famous among Philippine food circles as the “Lechon Diva,” shared photos on social media of her homegrown venture’s opening day last Friday, June 24. One of them shows dozens of guests lined up to have a gander at her local favorite lechon stuffed with truffle rice and her new menu addition, the sisig panini, among many other mouth-watering Filipino treats. She even had the honor of feeding as one of her first customers the legendary boxer Mike Tyson — seriously, how many food places could claim the same?
Pepita’s Kitchen is part of Resorts World Las Vegas’ interactive 24,000-square-feet food destination called Famous Foods Eat Street. Inside, 16 food stalls helmed by some of the best restaurateurs across the globe get to present their gastronomic offers to resort guests, and Lechon Diva’s famous roasted pigs just happen to be the sole and handpicked representative of our islands.
On Resort World Las Vegas’ official landing page, the luxury establishment profiled the Lechon Diva herself as that who “quickly made her mark on Manila’s local food scene with her exclusive 12-course private degustation dinners featuring her stuffed lechon creations that are commonly frequented by stars such as Martha Stewart and Adam Richman, and visited by the late Anthony Bourdain.”
Other outstanding stalls along the resort’s Famous Foods Eat Street are a traditional Singaporean Hainanese chicken stall, a Michelin Bib Gourmand-endorsed dumplings nook hailing from Hong Kong, and an iconic family-run Thai beef noodle shop from Bangkok, per ANCX.
Granted, Las Vegas is a few miles beyond our reach, so we’re lucky we can enjoy Lechon Diva’s goods straight from the source here in the Philippines. To sample Pepita’s Kitchen array of Filipino goods such as crab gulong, kare-kareng kasuy, hiplog or shrimps with salted egg, and of course, their truffle rice-stuffed lechon, drop them a line at their Facebook page or call their Viber hotline at 0917-866-0662.
(Images from Dedet de la Fuente/Lechon Diva of Pepita’s Kitchen)
